Why Brownlee Left

"Why Brownlee Left, which won the Faber Memorial Prize, established (Muldoon's) reputation. In the title poem, a sonnet, Muldoon plays with one of the classic images from Irish literature, the farmer with his plow. Why Brownlee Left, however, contains not a farmer and plow, but a plow mysteriously abandoned: Why Brownlee left, and where he went is a mystery even now. Instead of solving the mystery, the poem focuses on the things Brownlee abandoned: his farm and team of horses who stand listlessly without knowing what to do." - Encyclopedia of British Writers, 19th and 20th Centuries